Tales from the Emergency Room by FAAAAI MD William E. Hermance Read Free Book Online

Mr. Smith, too. Just a wee bit suspicious, I checked the rotation list to find that he had been assigned to me out of turn by the resident who didn’t want to interfere with a good thing. I managed to keep all these Smiths straight, but the favorite question to me each day was, naturally, “How is Mr. Smith doing?”
    Legs
    Unused as I was to having my legs admired, I was most interested in a classmate’s remark as we were waiting in our skivvies to go into the “hot” room while involuntarily participating in another experiment, this one in physiology. Said he, “You look like you must have been a football player.” Touch football once in a while as a kid but none after that I hastened to inform him. Then we went into the “hot” room to sweat, whirl thermometers around and undertake other interesting activities in the name of science. I have no idea what prompted his remark, but I do have big legs.
    Birds, for the
    One of my classmates who went on to become a very famous physician-administrator in New York City was married to the daughter of the author of the most widely used pediatric textbook, then and now. She and her sister were hired to do the extensive index to the first edition. It must truly have been a massive job. One understands why the sisters would have been happy to complete it. I’m not sure when they added the entry, but there in the “B” section of the index was the listing, “Birds, for the, pages 1-1413”. I saw it for myself! I’m told their father was not happy but surely he had to be amused. Future editions do not have that reference.
    Gypsies
    In the southern tier of New York State, south of Rochester, there were and may still be gypsy campgrounds. A gypsy chief arrived at the hospital one day requesting to see a surgeon. It seems there was a sick person in the encampment who needed to have a doctor visit. One of the staff went with the chief to the encampment where he found a young man lying outside of the main tent. The doctor was asked to examine the man, which he did. He announced that there was nothing wrong with the man except that his heart was on the right side of his chest, usually a normal variant. With that, the doctor was escorted into the tent where the truly ill patient lay. The doctor arranged for the patient to be sent to the hospital, now with the approval of the gypsies.
    For several days after this event, there were gypsies all over the hospital, but there was never any trouble with them so far as I knew. Eventually, the patient recovered, the visitors were happy and the attending physician was congratulated for his astuteness.
    Ardmore Street
    After I got married we lived in an apartment in a converted house on Ardmore Street in Rochester. This was not the high rent district. Among my classmates there was an annual competition to see who paid the least rent for their apartments. Peggy and I won each year. But, one day while Peggy was pregnant, the landlord raised our rent. It went from $60.00 per month to $65.00. So, we paid our landlord a visit in his Rochester business office. He was quite pleasant, possibly because of Peggy’s condition and the fact that I was a starving medical student. At any rate, we came to an agreement; I would mow the not very big lawn and shovel the snow off of the short front walk and he would not raise the rent.
    A Different Competition
    There was another competition in our class, as well. One of my classmate’s wives was pregnant. What was unusual was that her mother was also pregnant, due around the same time as her daughter. We were amused by the stories my classmate’s wife told about the ways in which her mother was in competition with her. Near term for both of them, her mother was in a serious automobile crash. Fortunately both expectant mother and her child survived. My classmate’s wife readily agreed that her mother had won the competition and that she was glad to have that part of her pregnancy over with. We were able to